Dasani Products Recalled Due to 'Clear Parasite'?

Reports that Coca-Cola is recalling Dasani water products after a "clear parasite" was found in bottles in the United States are fake news.

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CLAIM

Coca-Cola issued a recall of Dasani water products after a clear parasite was found in bottles across the United States.

FALSE

RATING

FALSE

ORIGIN

In April 2016, the web site News4KTLA published an article reporting that Coca-Cola had issued a recall on Dasani water products after a clear parasite was found in bottles across the United States:

If you purchase/drink Dasani water you might want to listen up. There has been a major recall by the Coca-Cola company today after several thousand bottles of their drinking water was found to be contaminated with a parasite. It has sent several hundred people to the hospital and is responsible for parasitic symptoms such as fever, rash, vomiting and stomach bloating.

Even though the majority of the impurities have admittedly been removed from Dasani water, and minerals added back in, these parasites have somehow worked their way into their supposedly “clean” water system which has been passed on to the consumer. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has shut down the manufacturing facility and issued a major recall on the brand. Do not drink this water! The FDA is recommending that if you have no choice but to consume the water, you MUST boil the water first to kill the parasite. Otherwise, it will host itself in your stomach lining and intestine and breed offsprings.

There was no truth to this article, which originated as a piece of fake news from News 4 KTLA, a clickbait site that mimics the appearance of a local television news station’s online arm. News 4 KTLA carries no “fiction” or “satire” disclaimer anywhere on the site and has a history of publishing fearmongering stories based on little or no factual evidence).

Coca-Cola did not issue a recall on Dasani products for any reason in April 2016 and noted in a statement that: “The source of this false and inflammatory information about our brand is a hoax news website. There is no recall of Dasani being conducted in the U.S.” The Food and Drug Administration similarly said they were not aware of any current recalls or disease outbreaks associated with Dasani water.

The News 4 KTLA site used an image of a Leptocephalus, a flat and transparent eel larva which is not a parasite, to illustrate the story. The original image came from the Mie Prefecture Fisheries Research Institute:

If Coca-Cola really had issued a major recall after a parasite was discovered in “several thousand” bottles of Dasani water, leading to the hospitalization of “several hundred people,” that event would have been widely covered in the media, not limited exclusively to the clickbait site News 4 KTLA.